Simulation of Whistler Chorus in a Compressed Dipole Field

Abstract:

Earth’s dipole magnetic field is constantly compressed by the solar wind and the compression is enhanced during magnetic storm. We simulate whistler chorus in a compressed dipole field using a hybrid code. The hybrid code uses the particle-in-cell technique in generalized orthogonal coordinates. In the hybrid code, a small fraction of electrons are treated as particles with anisotropic temperature that leads to the whistler instability. Other electrons are treated as a cold fluid without mass. The density of the fluid electrons is large such that the plasma frequency exceeds the electron gyro frequency. Ions serve as a fixed background. We model the compressed dipole field by adding a constant magnetic field component to the dipole field. The direction of the compressed component is the same as that of the dipole field at the equator. This model of the compressed dipole field yields a magnetic field with off-equator minima and smaller inhomogeneity than the dipole field near the equator. The distribution of hot anisotropic electrons along the magnetic field is a function of adiabatic invariants that satisfies MHD force balance. In the compressed dipole field, the hot electron anisotropy, hot electron density and plasma beta in the direction parallel to the background magnetic field are the maximum at the minimum magnetic field. In our simulation, whistler chorus are generated at the minimum magnetic field with a peak frequency in agreement with the prediction by WHAMP, a local dispersion relation solver. The waves propagate in both directions along the magnetic field. Waves that propagate to higher magnetic latitude are damped at the boundary by the artificial resistive layers, while waves that propagate to lower latitude towards the equator continue to grow.